


Walter Goes to Taco Bell

by NUKANotUserKnownAs



Category: Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: No Smut, POV Second Person, light gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:08:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24414118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NUKANotUserKnownAs/pseuds/NUKANotUserKnownAs
Summary: An idea, that's all. No bad vibes intended.
Kudos: 8





	Walter Goes to Taco Bell

Here is Ashfield; here is the sidewalk off the Fred Meyer, where one may panhandle if they do it just at dusk when visibility is low and people can't make you out from a distance but can't miss you when they pull in, here is the YMCA, where you can shower and get your clothing washed, here is the airport, out past which are rocks and weeds, where there may be deer but where no one will run you off for trying to sleep. Here are the other vagrants, who don't like you, because you're strange - not _mentally ill_ in any definable way, just _strange_ , a little _off_ , and what's the nature of this vague disquiet?

Well, you're more articulate than them, a little cleverer, a little younger and a lot quieter, which scans "gay runaway", obviously, but no - you're not, so far as anyone can tell, gay - so the question becomes just what the hell did you do to end up like _this?_ The only religious types out here anyone knows about are Mormons, and they treat their apostates just fine, no panhandling for _those._

If you mentioned Sects, as of the Holy Mother or the Red... You don't like to think the words, but _those_. If - no one would know what you were talking about. And if they did, someone might come find you.

__

Here is the Taco Bell, the second Taco Bell in Ashfield, distinct from its sister across the river in that there's a little alcove near the back, where one of the tables is nearly hidden under a tree and where a tall, sheer retaining wall looms up behind that, cutting off the line of sight to your back, while the Taco Bell itself blocks the line of sight to your front, allowing you to eat tacos at a table without attracting a lot of unwelcome attention.

__

Distinct from its sister also in that the first, last, and only time you tried to eat _there,_ you experienced an unwelcome visitation.

__

You were waiting for the line to shorten up, because waiting in line while looking like you do was to be avoided, and you needed to take a leak, and you went for the men's room, which had a bend in it at the end, and how the hell _,_ because the foot of that 'L' would have to be about two feet wide to really fit inside the building - but, fine, this Taco Bell has its restroom at the end of a hall, and -

__

The lights were dim, but not so dim that when you opened the door, heard the gurgle like blood going down a drain, like _meat_ going down a drain, a description which fails to hold up but made _all the sense in the world_ at the time, a long cavernous septic warble -

__

And thinking better of it, cracked it.

__

\- you didn't see the person standing in front of the sink, which was the only sink in the room, every other one having been removed, leaving only bolt marks and pipe fittings in the cold stark midnight fluorescence, a space that was no longer anything identifiable but which had the curt domesticity of a laundromat and the cast-off quality of something shut off from people for a long time. Then his face in the mirror, which was gone so that all that remained was like the leather of a football, a brown wrinkled absence.

__

So, you aren't welcome in that Taco Bell. It's an unwelcome place. You eat across the river, and it's an easier hike from there to the heights anyhow. The guy could've been a burn victim.

__

You know damn well that he _wasn't_ , but he could've been.

__


End file.
